I’m happy to present this guest post from @skander, a former languages professor who left for the strangely greener pastures of being a corporate drone (and it gives him more time for elf games). – J. Alan Henning

In my life, I’ve been a tenured language professor and a TTRPG player, and I’ve seen a few discussions of how to act on the idea of language differences in role-playing games (this one by Tom van Winkle and a discussion around it led me to writing this post).

The goal of this post is to marry real-world, established ways of thinking about language with gameable ideas. I’ll review what it means to be proficient in a language, and then suggest some ways you can actually put that into play in an elf game. And even give you a PbtA move you can use.

The value of using real-world standards for talking about language is that—if you want more information and ideas—you can dive into a wide variety of materials already created around those standards, rather than having to make things up on your own, or pour over pages 113-115 in a splatbook. There are tons of guideline documents, YouTube videos, blog posts and other materials explaining these standards. If you’ve got simulationist leanings, it also means that your game will better reflect how languages are learned and used.  

What it means to “be good” at a language

There are many different systems for assessing language proficiency. What I know best are the ACTFL (American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages) and the related ILR (International Language Roundtable) systems used in the United States. The European equivalent is the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference), which is pretty similar in its overall structure. Here’s a link to the 2024 ACTFL guidelines. 

I’ll stick with ACTFL. I’m also going to focus on interpersonal speaking, since that’s the language use you’re most likely to encounter in elf games. Especially if you’re in some sort of fantasy-medieval-ish setting, literacy will be a pretty complicated can of worms.

The ACTFL breaks down proficiency using the “FACT” framework:

• Functions: What you can do with the language?
• Accuracy: How comprehensible is the language to interlocutors?
• Contexts: Where can you use the language? What contexts can you function in?
• Text type: What kind of language you’re producing (from single words up to essay-like discourse)?

Based on what you’re able to do in each of these when speaking, you’re sorted into one of four categories: Novice, Intermediate, Advanced and Superior. This is an academic scale, so they are interested in academic topics, but it still can work well for elf games:

	Novice	Intermediate	Advanced	Superior
Function	Basic survival functions (directions, order food, etc.)	Express personal information, preferences, simple transactions, ask useful questions. Can handle everyday situations with few complications.	General conversations on a variety of concrete topics, talk about past, present, future, some abstract discussion. Can handle a situation with a complication.	Both fluent and very good at specialized, complex language. This would basically count as totally fluent for elf-game purpose. The biggest change from advanced is the ability to handle multiple varieties and registers of the language.
Accuracy	Difficult for native speakers to understand	Sympathetic native speakers can understand them pretty well	Most native speakers understand them, even a-holes.
Contexts	Personally relevant topics (it’s all about me)	Self and others/other things in the immediate environment	Topics of general interest and discussion, might have specialized language
Text Type	Single words, memorized phrases, very basic memorized questions	Discrete sentences, almost never  in paragraphs; can ask useful questions	Paragraph level language

If you want to hear what this sounds like in practice, check out ACTFL’s (rather dated) Youtube playlist. 

Why such big differences?

You might have noticed that the jump from Novice to Intermediate is pretty big, the leap from Intermediate to Advanced is even bigger, and I’ve handwaved the jump from Advanced to Superior, but that one’s huge. ACTFL visualizes this as an inverted pyramid to emphasize that it’s a ton of learning to get between the levels, and that the task gets harder as you get more advanced. 

Think of it like XP in old D&D – it gets harder and harder to level up. 

It’s pretty easy to get from nothing to Novice (usually 1-2 semesters of college language class, living in a place and interacting daily for a month or two). Plenty of college students with 4 years of language end up somewhere in Intermediate, though there are many that get to Advanced. Advanced usually requires pretty intensive study and study abroad, while going from Advanced to Superior is normally the province of insanely intensive study abroad programs (mine was 12 months, in-country, with class 4 hours a day and buckets of homework). 

How this is judged

These are proficiency scales. That is to say, they’re interested in what you can do in the real world, not how many grammar questions you can get right on a test. 

The best way to measure interpersonal proficiency is an oral proficiency interview. This is  a face-to-face or phone conversation that takes 15-30 minutes. The tester will try to figure out what level you’re at, and then see if you’re able to handle that level consistently. 

Of interest to elf-game types, there’s usually a roleplay. This is to check if the language can be used to perform more real-world tasks, and to distinguish Intermediate from Advanced. At the Intermediate level, you can handle a really basic situation, like reporting that your wallet was stolen.  At Advanced, you can handle a situation with a complication, for example arriving in a place to find your baggage hasn’t arrived, and so making arrangements to get it later. 

What’s with those intermediate levels?

During the interview, they’ll check to see if you can “rise to the occasion” of doing things at a higher level. If you can do that part of the time, but not all, they’ll give you an “high” rating. So if you can sometimes talk about general topics, and sometimes use paragraphs, but when flustered or fatigued you switch to sentences, you’ll get Intermediate High. 

This is relevant because I think it can be handled reasonably well with dice rolls – sometimes you’re able to handle something, and sometimes you’re having a terrible language day – but in general you won’t fall down more than a full level. So if you’re Advanced, you probably won’t revert to Novice level.

Quick aside: What about accent?

People get really obsessed about accent when talking about learning a foreign language. It’s true that if you didn’t acquire the language very, very early in your life, you’ll probably have a noticeable foreign accent. Them’s the breaks, life is tough. But the thing is, you can still get a lot of things done regardless – and notice how the guidelines above ask how well you’re understood, not whether you sound perfectly nativelike. There are plenty of people out there with noticeable accents who are doing amazing things in their non-native language. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan have both had successful film careers in spite of having noticeable accents in English, to say nothing of Arnold’s political career. Accents hold people back less than we think.

You can also get good at a lot of other linguistic things, like grammar, vocab, etc. 

Here’s one of my favorite graphs that shows that you can still do quite well at morphosyntax even with a late age of acquisition (from Granena, Gisela, and Michael H Long. “Age of Onset, Length of Residence, Language Aptitude, and Ultimate L2 Attainment in Three Linguistic Domains.” Second Language Research, vol. 29, no. 3, 2013, pp. 311–343.) It also shows how much variety there can be between people. Speakers with the same age of onset range from the top to bottom of all of those scales.  

Quick aside: Multilingualism

There’s a tendency in the modern world to assume that the standard state of being is to be monolingual and have a single native language. This is coming from a place of modern nation states where the nationalist equation of language-land-people has been incredibly dominant. In the era before nation-states, and even in many, many places in today’s world still, it’s common for people to grow up speaking multiple languages as native-like languages. There are some measurable differences between such people and monolinguals, but that’s the place of formant chart comparisons, not something worth doing in an RPG.  

How to make this gameable

I haven’t actually had a chance to test anything from below, but the framework lends itself well to implementation in elfgames.

Proficiency levels

Using a system you like (e.g., backstories, quantum language knowledge, etc.) decide if a player knows a language. If they do, assign a reasonable rating for their proficiency in that language, from Novice to Superior. Again, this blog post by Tom Van Winkle has some ideas about that. 

I don’t think it’s worth getting as detailed as Low-Mid-High. If you want to model that, have a dice roll for determining how well they’re languaging in a given interaction. 

Third-person approach: Functions

I think the best way to avoid awkward attempts to pretend to speak a language badly is to go with a third person approach:

 “My character tries to explain to the guard that we’re looking for a thief who ran back through the castle door.” 

You can then assess whether the character’s language level means that this is likely to be successful. This example would probably require Advanced level proficiency, since they’re narrating something outside of the here-and-now, and the situation will probably involve complications (like the guard not wanting to let them into that door). 

You could probably just allow them to do the thing if they’re Advanced in the language. If they’re intermediate, maybe you could allow a roll. If they’re novice, no way.

Here are some functions as examples (Y for yes, can do it, N for no, cannot do it).

Task	Novice	Intermediate	Advanced	Superior
Buy stuff	Y	Y	Y	Y
Get directions	Y	Y	Y	Y
Give simple instructions to crew	Y	Y	Y	Y
Get directions for something that’s far away or hard to get to	N	Y	Y	Y
Greet strangers and get basic info	N	Y	Y	Y
Give complex instructions to a crew	N	Y	Y	Y
Gather local rumors	N	N	Y	Y
Tell the tale of their triumphant victory over the dragon in a tavern	N	N	Y	Y
Talk to someone from outside the main regions you’re familiar with	N	N	?	Y
Compose a poem about their triumphant victory over the dragon	N	N	N	Y
Go from speaking to a king to speaking to a street urchin, using appropriate language for each	N	N	N	Y
Imitate the voice of a native speaker	N	N	N	N

Cultural proficiency

In general, the ability to be culturally sensitive and aware tracks pretty well with the proficiency levels. Novice will have very, very basic knowledge of common, very obvious cultural differences, Superior will be able to act culturally appropriately the vast majority of the time. If intercultural communication is big in your game, check out the ACTFL guidelines for the sociocultural part of the rubrics. 

First-person approach: Text type

If you like speaking in character, it’s easy to use the text type dimension to inform how they speak. I personally think this can get a bit cringe, but the right table might enjoy the challenge. Just tell the player they’re only allowed to use the following depending on language level:

Level	What kinds of language
Novice	Individual words and memorized phrases: “How’s it going”, “gods bless”, “300, not more”, “Left, right, straight”
Intermediate	Simple sentences or questions, only using present tense: “I want to go to the tavern”, “The dragon kill 6 people”, “Do you see the thief go by here?”
Advanced	Basically normal speech, but without rhetorical flourishes or the ability to switch to different registers.
Superior	I don’t think you need any special roleplaying at this level, they can do anything linguistically you need unless it’s very obscure. They will probably still be recognized as having an accent.

PBTA Style

If you wanted to use this approach in a PBTA style game, you could use a move like the following:

Stretch Your Tongue

When you attempt an important interaction in a foreign language at one level beyond your proficiency level (more than this is impossible), roll+CHA (or relevant social skill). 

On a hit, you’re able to communicate what you wanted to say. If this would normally trigger a roll, treat this roll as the result for the move. 

On a 7-9, the DM chooses one of the following:

• You accidentally agreed to something you didn’t quite understand
• Your linguistic fumbles provoke laughter, patronizing treatment or contempt
• You’re so distracted by focusing on speaking that you miss an impending situation
• There’s a misunderstanding that wastes time or resources

On a 6-, the DM can choose multiple from the list above or make a move.

Text copyright ©2024 Skander. The text of this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Universal 1.0 license.

Photo by Kristijan Arsov on Unsplash.